Safari Wilderness Safari Wilderness Review and News Thread

Sometime last year SW started renting "Premium" and "Classic" Safari tents for an outright egregious price. They have 9 or 10 tents (the website gives both numbers) near the main "lodge" building.

The Classic Safari tent is $400 a night and the Premium is.....wait for it.......$1,500 a night. LOL. That is just insane. You could literally go on a safari in Africa for a week, with flights, for what it would cost to stay here 5 nights (not that you ever would stay at SW for 5 nights). Hey, it comes with a continental breakfast too!
 
SwampDonkey said:
Sometime last year SW started renting "Premium" and "Classic" Safari tents for an outright egregious price. They have 9 or 10 tents (the website gives both numbers) near the main "lodge" building.

The Classic Safari tent is $400 a night and the Premium is.....wait for it.......$1,500 a night. LOL. That is just insane. You could literally go on a safari in Africa for a week, with flights, for what it would cost to stay here 5 nights (not that you ever would stay at SW for 5 nights). Hey, it comes with a continental breakfast too!
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Well I know a good number of safari sites that charge just 300 or 400 per night to make it your right of way.
 
SwampDonkey said:
So apparently they have cheetah? They were not there when I toured a few years back. I'll try and get more information.
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Their sister facility, Giraffe Ranch, has had them for a couple of years now. I don't really understand how the two places work; GR is now well over $100 just for the most basic tour/visit. They want several hundred $ to see the cheetahs. They claimed they were going to be breeding them, but last time I was able to confirm what cats they had, their only male was well past breeding age.
 
TinoPup said:
Their sister facility, Giraffe Ranch, has had them for a couple of years now. I don't really understand how the two places work; GR is now well over $100 just for the most basic tour/visit. They want several hundred $ to see the cheetahs. They claimed they were going to be breeding them, but last time I was able to confirm what cats they had, their only male was well past breeding age.
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The owner is Lex Salisbury, the previous Director of Lowry Park/Zoo Tampa that resigned under rather....pervasive issues. He took LPZ from nothing to a world class zoo, but at the same time he treated it like he was king. That heavy handedness really made LPZ a tight organization that had a mission and vision, but it also caused him to act like the rules of finance, separation of organizations, and staffing did not apply to him. He has a vision for these places, and it is an expensive one. I guess it is working out well enough, he has been at it for quite some time.

I have never been to Giraffe Ranch, but maybe at some point I will get over there. The cost is just so prohibitive. GR looks like a better deal as they have more species like indian rhino, tapir, cheetah, pygmy hippo, etc., - all of which are not at (or were not at Safari Wilderness.

Although, I wonder if they moved the cheetah over to SW form GR, the website for GR does not mention them (although there is a picture in the gallery).

*edit*
You can still add the cheetah feeding onto your tour....for a value price of $299. :eek::mad:
Oh, and parking is $12.o_O
 
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SwampDonkey said:
The owner is Lex Salisbury, the previous Director of Lowry Park/Zoo Tampa that resigned under rather....pervasive issues. He took LPZ from nothing to a world class zoo, but at the same time he treated it like he was king. That heavy handedness really made LPZ a tight organization that had a mission and vision, but it also caused him to act like the rules of finance, separation of organizations, and staffing did not apply to him. He has a vision for these places, and it is an expensive one. I guess it is working out well enough, he has been at it for quite some time.

I have never been to Giraffe Ranch, but maybe at some point I will get over there. The cost is just so prohibitive. GR looks like a better deal as they have more species like indian rhino, tapir, cheetah, pygmy hippo, etc., - all of which are not at (or were not at Safari Wilderness.

Although, I wonder if they moved the cheetah over to SW form GR, the website for GR does not mention them (although there is a picture in the gallery).

*edit*
You can still add the cheetah feeding onto your tour....for a value price of $299. :eek::mad:
Oh, and parking is $12.o_O
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I didn't know any of that, he's not someone I'm familiar with. Doesn't sound good :(

When I first learned about the place, they were acting as a fairly regular zoo with normal admission. During covid they switched to this more exclusive model that doesn't really make sense to me, given the number of places people can visit in the area.

It's by far the most expensive cheetah bts thing in the country, and I'm not sure if you even get anything exclusive at that price. They charge for parking?! Why??
 
TinoPup said:
I didn't know any of that, he's not someone I'm familiar with. Doesn't sound good :(
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Yeah, it was a huge mess. LPZ even lost its AZA accreditation temporarily. The zoo was loaning and transferring animals to SW and GR, and LPZ paid for "holding pens" at SW, which is what kicked off the investigations. There was even a loan agreement in place to hold white rhino at SW and the offspring would belong to SW. All the agreements in place were dissolved, of course.

It was kind of a sad turn, there was great hope among some of us that SW was going to be LPZ's version of the Wild Animal Park or The Wilds. In one way it was becoming that, but Lex went about it the wrong way, making it his private park instead of a real venture from LPZ. He had great visions and is a persuasive person, but in the end it took a sour turn. SW even lost their ZAA accreditation, which is not an easy feat.
When I first learned about the place, they were acting as a fairly regular zoo with normal admission. During covid they switched to this more exclusive model that doesn't really make sense to me, given the number of places people can visit in the area.
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Agreed, I wish it were more normal. Even a high entry price would not be crazy, but over $100 a person is just outrageous. But they seem to still have a market.....I still lament that it is not a ZooTampa project or joint project.
They charge for parking?! Why??
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Yeah, both SW and GR charge for parking.....I guess because they can. But $12 to park on top of the entry price is rather insulting.
 
Aardwolf said:
The Thomas French book "Zoo Story" has a good recap of the Salisbury years, ending with his departure from Lowry Park amid the scandal
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Now I am going to have to get that book, thanks for the information. As one Amazon review said about Lex "a CEO that was both loved and reviled", that is about right. I revile him for the things he did that were underhanded, but I respect him for the place that he took LPZ and the way that the zoo was maintained and the animals that were kept at the time.
 
I vaguely remember LPZ not being accredited for a while, but I didn't know the story behind it. It sounds like in the end, he cared more about the attention and making a name for himself than he did for the animals and the species :(

Losing ZAA takes a LOT of work, wow.

I can't think of any zoo that charges for parking and isn't a city zoo where parking harder to come by / people can also easily visit via public transport.
 
TinoPup said:
I

Losing ZAA takes a LOT of work, wow.
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Yeah, I am not sure of the details there. I think because the whole thing was so public, Lex was on the board or had some position within the ZAA, he had to step down from the ZAA when he left LPZ amid the scandal and they lost or resigned the membership in the ZAA. Contrast that with places like Two Tails which are ZAA, but really fly under the radar - you have to know about that place to know it is even there.
I can't think of any zoo that charges for parking and isn't a city zoo where parking harder to come by / people can also easily visit via public transport.
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Yeah, it is quite egregious, it's just a dirt parking lot as it is.
 
They've had cheetahs for a few years now. Last time they had actual prices, it was $300 to see them. Now they've removed prices, so that probably went up.
 
TinoPup said:
They've had cheetahs for a few years now. Last time they had actual prices, it was $300 to see them. Now they've removed prices, so that probably went up.
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You can find the prices if you go through to actually book a tour, the same $299 a person. They did not have them back in 2017 when I went, so they must have added them sometime since then.
 
SwampDonkey said:
I have never been to Giraffe Ranch, but maybe at some point I will get over there. The cost is just so prohibitive. GR looks like a better deal as they have more species like indian rhino, tapir, cheetah, pygmy hippo, etc., - all of which are not at (or were not at Safari Wilderness.

.o_O
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Ive been there and your right. They also had fishing cats, some species of African otter that I forgot the species name (Likely ether spotted neck or African clawless), bongos, warthogs, cavys, porcupines, and obvisley giraffes (As of July 2020). There lemur enclosures are of much higher quality and mixed with Guinea foul.

They seem to have replaced the bongo feeding with a simler cheetah experience to SW
 
I've heard of this place and I'm wondering as to how they manage to attract clientele at their outrageous prices. Lion Country and Wild Florida Safaris are all much cheaper and more or less offer the same experiences, and they're also pretty close by.
 
SusScrofa said:
I've heard of this place and I'm wondering as to how they manage to attract clientele at their outrageous prices. Lion Country and Wild Florida Safaris are all much cheaper and more or less offer the same experiences, and they're also pretty close by.
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Well, before Wild Florida opened their safari section they were pretty much the only place in the area. Sure Lion Country Safari is in the state, but it is a good 3.5-4 hour drive from Tampa - so doable as a loooong day trip (and my parents did it as a day trip when I was a kid), but when this place is just down the road and offers a similar experience to most people in the Tampa (or further North) metro and Orlando metro, it makes some sense if you have cash to burn or are ignorant of the other facilities.

Now that Wild Florida offers a much better overall safari and zoo experience, it does not make a lot of sense to me either.
 
SwampDonkey said:
Well, before Wild Florida opened their safari section they were pretty much the only place in the area. Sure Lion Country Safari is in the state, but it is a good 3.5-4 hour drive from Tampa - so doable as a loooong day trip (and my parents did it as a day trip when I was a kid), but when this place is just down the road and offers a similar experience to most people in the Tampa (or further North) metro and Orlando metro, it makes some sense if you have cash to burn or are ignorant of the other facilities.

Now that Wild Florida offers a much better overall safari and zoo experience, it does not make a lot of sense to me either.
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Ah, I got mixed up with its location. Thought it was closer to Kissimmee. Though with Disneys Animal Kingdom and Busch Gardens already in the area, it still doesn't make much sense.
 
SusScrofa said:
Ah, I got mixed up with its location. Thought it was closer to Kissimmee. Though with Disneys Animal Kingdom and Busch Gardens already in the area, it still doesn't make much sense.
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Yeah, it is kind of 1/2 between Tampa and Orlando, closer to Tampa (especially with Orlando traffic). Agreed, at the current rates I would rather spend the day at either Busch or DAK - with Busch selling a year pass to Florida residents for about the same price.
 
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